Chewing Gum

We have all stepped in at one time or another. My feet were drawn to it when I was a child – especially if I had on new shoes. Now the Brits have a solution in the fight against chewing gum litter:

Chewing gum litter go down by 87%

Date published: 20/11/2009

A campaign warning chewers of gum they risk a litter fine if they don’t put their used gum in the bin has seen a huge drop in gum litter in the Rochdale borough. Since the campaign’s launch at the start of this October, a Keep Britain Tidy survey has revealed gum litter in the borough has gone down by 87% overall.

As part of a national study being carried out by Keep Britain Tidy’s Chewing Gum Action Group, Rochdale Borough Council selected 10 high-footfall areas across the borough to carry out a survey to measure reductions in gum litter at the end of the campaign at the beginning of November.

Councillor Greg Couzens, cabinet member for finance, enthused: “What a brilliant result! It’s great timing in the run up to Christmas as we welcome people into our town centres to do their Christmas shopping. Cleanliness of shopping centres is such an important factor as people judge an area based on its appearance and cleanliness. Seeing lots of chewing gum on the floor runs places down, so I’m encouraged by these fantastic results.”

Throughout the campaign, council street cleaning teams wore high visibility jackets with the message ‘don’t drop gum, it’s litter’, whilst high profile gum litter adverting across the borough’s town centres, buses and telephone boxes told chewers that irresponsibly disposed of gum is litter and they could be landed with a litter fine if caught dropping it. This follows an earlier Chewing Gum Action Group study which showed many gum chewers simply don’t associate dropping gum as litter.

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